Door de bomen het bos leren zien, en ... door het bos de bomen: Het Nederlandse Case Studies Project Geestelijke Verzorging

Chaplaincy/spiritual care is a young profession whose multiple and multicolored
practice has so far hardly been explored and analyzed through
empirical research. In our research, we have partly mapped the practice
using case studies. In doing so, we made a number of methodological
choices, such as soliciting case studies of care practices in various fields
of chaplaincy, attending to context, requesting member checks, working
in research communities with a detailed format for the case studies, all
in a four-year process. We offer here a motivation for our methodological
choices, followed by an evaluation. A common thread running through
the choices and evaluation is the tension between the concreteness of
the practices and general definitions of what chaplaincy/spiritual care is.